Our first (minor) accident right before leaving Colombia

All three of us were ready for the border crossing: we had photocopies of our main papers, we had enough dollars to pay any exit or entry fees and we had just enough Colombian money left to buy lunch before going to the border. Gus was happy to be with us as he had now his private translators for the border crossing. We heard that in South America the formalities were much easier and less time consuming than in Central America: we were about to find out if this was true.


A collision between husband and wife
We had one last big city to go through in Colombia, Pasto, before reaching the border town about one hour south. Caroline was in the lead that day, trying to find the right way through the maze of the city. There were of course no signs so she followed the main streets and looked where most of the cars were going. Seemed to have been working pretty well until that intersection when she was not sure if she should go straight or turn left. She slowed down, hesitated, and finally decided to go straight. Chad, who was right behind her, thought she was turning left and as he was going a little faster, turned left in front of her as she decided to go straight. At that point, it was already too late: the two bikes were going into each other. Caroline made a sharp left turn to avoid Chad, running straight into a high sidewalk. She managed to only barely touch Chad's saddlebag and for a second she thought she was able to re-balance the bike on the sidewalk... until she hit the wall that was there. The bike fell on the sidewalk with Caroline stuck underneath. Chad, who did not fall, saw it all happening and ran towards the bike to lift it up. She could finally remove her leg from under the bike and two other guys who stopped help Chad put the bike straight up. She was lying her back on the ground, legs on the sidewalk. Luckily, she only had a small wound on the right shin and pain that was certainly going to turn into a big bruise. She walked a little bit, letting the adrenaline rush calm down and making sure nothing was broken. It could have been much worse: she was ok and able to continue the ride and the bike was still running, scratched on the left front fearing and headlight and the right handlebar bent.
We found our way out of the city and after a good lunch, arrived at the border. We were checked out of Colombia, passport and bike, in about 15 minutes. This was a good sign. We crossed the bridge into Ecuador, got our passports stamped and walked to the customs for the bikes. This is when Chad noticed that between Pasto and here, Caroline had lost the metal piece at the end of her right handlebar. Not a critical piece for the bike to function but necessary to attach the hand guard and reduce vibrations. We looked for it for a while but did not find it: it wasn't only bent, the screw inside had apparently broken. Oh well! At the customs, the process was easy and we were optimistic about doing our fastest border crossing until we were told that the printer had no more ink. They had to go and buy new one. An hour later, the guy came back with the toner but unfortunately the power had gone since. We ended up waiting another half hour until everything was solved. It could have been the fastest border crossing if it wasn't for a lack of luck with technology.

Standing tall in two hemispheres at the same time


We spent our first Ecuadorian night in Ibarra, a big town about 100 Kms north of Quito. What we had seen so far from this country was beautiful: high peaks, deep valleys and canyons. Looks like we would remain on the same riding standards that Colombia had set. The good news too is that gas was so much cheaper here, less then half of what we paid in Colombia for a gallon (about $1.5/gallon). On the other hand, we had to pay the tolls in this country but at 20 cents/bike each, we could not complain too much. At dinner that night, Gus told us that he had to accelerate the pace since he wanted to be in Uruguay within a month to meet up with friends. We had a nice last meal together, talking about how much fun we had riding together in three different countries. Tomorrow, the Whitemans would be riding as a couple again. The next day, we went for our first touristy stop: the equator, also called Mitad del Mundo here, or Middle of the world. Today, we would be crossing into the south hemisphere, a big milestone in our trip. We went to the park and walked towards the big sculpture that had been erected on the latitude 0°0'0”, as calculated by the French in the middle of the 18th century in a scientific expedition. We were excited to be here and took a few goofy pictures of us being in two hemispheres at the same time. Actually, it was not entirely true since a more precise measure by a GPS confirmed that the French were 240 meters off in their calculation. The real location of the equator was in the nearby IntiNan Museum, where there would be also scientific experiments to prove the true location of the equator.

We walked over to the nice small outdoors museum where our guide took us through different educational stations. The first part of the visit was focused on the different cultures you find in Ecuador today, like a remote indigenous community in the Amazon, famous for their cruelty towards their enemies. They are referred to as the “Head shrinking tribe" as they have a secret ritual where they chop off the head of their enemies, empty it from the bones and everything else and finally boil it for hours in a secret potion that shrinks the head to the size of a fist. Eventually, they saw the lips and nose of the mini head so that the power and soul of the enemy would not escape. We were “lucky” to see a reall human head totally shrunk but were assured that the tribe had declared they no longer perform this ritual, at leas not on humans.


The second part of the visit was much more light hearted: we got to experiment the physics of being on the equator. The most classic but so amazing experiment was when we flushed the water out of a big sink: right on the equator, the water goes straight down, showing the absence of Coriolis force. Only one meter south of the equator, the water was spinning clockwise and one meter north of it, counter clockwise. It was incredible to see all three in the same location, only distant from a couple of meters. The other amazing experiment was to show that gravity is stronger directly above the equator: when trying to resist someone pushing your arms down, Caroline could not get Chad to lower his arms but when he moved right on the equator line, a piece of cake! He could not resist Caroline's pressure down who felt like she was now as strong as WonderWoman. We did other experiments, like balancing an egg on a nail top right above the equator (it was relatively easy as the gravity pulls the yolk down but try at home and see how hard it is when not on the equator), or trying to walk on a the equator line with your eyes closed, which turned out to be pretty tricky. We had a lot of fun experimenting, the only thing missing was the sun to do all the experiments with our shadows.

We were off a good start in Ecuador. On the third day, we had to go through Quito, the capital, which is always a demanding and energy soaking experience. To avoid trouble, we decided not to stop in the city and continue south. The crossing, though long and with much traffic went well. Quito is such a widespread city that it took us a long time to go back to less populated areas, after the suburbs. We drove all the way to the Parque Nacional Cotopaxi, where we hired a guide to climb the Cotopaxi volcano the next day, which snow capped peak is at 5897 meters (about 18,000 feet). For now, we could only see clouds and no snow. Hopefully, tomorrow we would get a better view of the volcano.
For the night, we found a cozy little chalet right next to the park that we had all for ourselves. It was quite chilly so high in altitude and when the night came, we had to wear hats and warmer clothes. Chad lit up a fire in the chimney, which created both a warmer and more romantic setting. Even if it was Friday night, we had a quiet evening reading and writing the blog. Tomorrow, we would have to get up early and be in shape to climb the volcano, not all the way to the top, but a good 1000 meters to the snow line.